Resumes: Relevant or Relic?

Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.

Leonardo Da vinci is credited with crafting the first modern resume. The context was a letter, addressed to the Duke of Milan, where Leonardo captured his achievements in developing war instruments – presumably in an attempt to secure a job.

We could venture to say that the job market in Leonardo’s day was relatively stable, in that variance of skills and experience within a given labor market was limited.

Today, however, job responsibilities themselves skew broadly, because the rapid pace of change (cue technology) has shifted what work those jobs are needed to perform.

Today, some examples of those jobs might include a drone pilot – or drone fleet manager for that matter, or an autonomous transportation specialist. No member of the workforce has this specific work background because the work has never existed before.

Now consider the following:

The Institute for the Future (IFTF) estimates 85 percent of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet – a reality that significantly departs from the world Leonardo was living in.

In today’s world, past experience, documented by resumes, cannot correlate with future performance. Because, as we’ve noted, the scope of work is decidedly uncertain and subject to constant change.

What is certain is that humans have great capacity to learn new things, and should be matched with jobs based on this capacity.

…Potential is not fixed. We believe in human beings’ ability to grow; society cannot achieve economic as well as cultural progress without it….They can and do reinvent themselves – The Leadership Pipeline

We must seek to understand what can and cannot be taught about jobs, and connect people with work accordingly.

At Hype, we do just that. Using our Hype Type method, we reverse engineer the hiring process by first getting to know candidates based on the key reasons why people leave jobs.

In consideration of this new reality of work, we are rebranding the workforce by accounting for what can and cannot be taught about jobs and connecting people with work accordingly.